A CYBER revolution is taking place in dozens of villages of Bundelkhand and Bhatinda districts, powered by ‘TARAdhabas’ and Internet kiosks.

In the tiny Punavali Kalan village of Bundelkhand district, the village kids have stopped playing gulli danda. Their favourite pastime these days is surfing the Net ! Surprised? Don’t be. The children in the village need all of ten minutes to learn how to surf the Internet. And for hours together, they sit in a little room — called the TARAdhaba — that has a "magic machine which looks like a TV but does much more."

But what do they surf? The kids generally browse entertainment sites — particularly the ones that have pictures of Bollywood stars. And now instead of listening to the radio, they prefer to download their favourite songs from the Internet. And whenever they get the time, they rush to the TARAdhaba to take printouts of the evening’s TV schedule of their favourite cable channels.

Some of the more enterprising ones even order cinema tickets online for a theatre in Jhansi more than 40 kms away. The tickets are delivered to them by an e-Boy! For the farmers of the village, the TARAdhaba is more than just a new means of entertainment. Every morning they check the mandi prices on the computer, giving them a better bargaining power when they go out to sell the produce. And whenever someone in the village falls ill, the village housewives rush to the cyber kiosk to find a cure online! Welcome to the Net-savvy village.

The TARAdhaba is nothing but a rural version of a city cyber cafe. In the Punavali Kalan village, this cyber kiosk has been set up by three enterprising women of the village — Rajemani, Madhvi and Priti. They decided to become franchisees of TARAhaat.com, a portal that links rural people to information technology. TARA stands for Technology for Action for Rural Advancement and ‘haat’ means a weekly village market. And TARAhaat is working towards bridging the digital divide.

More than a dozen such TARAdhabas or cyber kiosks have been franchised by TARAhaat in several villages in the districts of Bhatinda (Punjab) and Bundelkhand (Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh). "We are in the process of setting up ten more in Bhatinda and many more in the Kapurthala district," informs Rajeshwari Prakash of TARAhaat.com.

Bundelkhand was chosen for the pilot project because the parent organisation of TARAhaat — Development Alternatives (DA) — had been working in the region for more than two decades. "We were familiar with the area and it was much easier to work there," says Prakash. Later, the the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) requested them to set up a similar project in Bhatinda as well.

The operation of TARAhaat is very simple. The portal has been custom-designed in such a way that even small children, women and illiterate people can use it without any difficulty. For instance, if they just click DOCTOR on the site, they can reach the health services channel, click MUSIC and it will play the latest music hits. The site displays all the information in their local languages with photographs and animated icons, diagrams and voice-overs. So, if the villagers can’t read, they can even talk to the computer. Even the computer will talk back to them. "The portal has been designed keeping in mind the Indian villages," says Prakash.

Most of the villages don’t have any phones, so the Net connectivity has been provided by using VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminals) technology for satellite connectivity. "All the TARAdhabas are self-sustaining independent franchisees," says Prakash. The TARAdhaba owners charge a minimal fee from the villagers for using the services — a minimum charge of Rs 5 and a maximum of Rs 60, depending on the paying capacity and the usage time. "The response has been good enough and some of the cyber kiosks are clocking more than 100 hours of usage every month," says Prakash. On their part, TARAhaat helps the owners of these cyber kiosks to get loans to buy the hardware.

TARAhaat is also working towards an e-commerce channel that’ll facilitate online shopping specifically for products needed by rural households like farm inputs, factory raw materials and so on. Six years down the line, TARAhaat.com plans to have around 50,000 franchised TARAdhabas. By then they also hope that it would turn into a profitable organisation. Big plans!

How the TARAdhabas help villagers

* Farmers check mandi prices online that helps them to bargain better

* Women surf health-related sites to find cures for common diseases

* The village kids download music from the Net